In IoT circles, air is a popular topic. There is so much of it and, at the same time, it is so fundamental to the quality of life on our planet.
During the IoT-4-Cities event Andrea Ridolfi, co-founder of SensorScope, presented about the use of sensors mounted on buses and trams to measure air quality in the cities of Lausanne and Zurich as part of the OpenSense project. 
This is a really interesting collaboration that I hope will develop systems for commercial deployments using an architecture similar to this one below.
Since deploying these systems widely will be expensive, going to scale will probably require getting citizens involved in air quality sensing. The citizen participation component of air quality sensing was the topic of presentations by Michael Setton, VP of Marketing of Sensaris and Jan Blom, User Experience Researcher at Nokia Research.
On March 30, the same day as the IoT-4-Cities meeting, the IoT-London meetup group held a workshop and 10 people built their first sensors. The web site with materials shared during the workshop would be a great basis for people to get started.
In parallel, Ed Borden of Pachube (LogMeIn) has put the Air Quality Egg project up on Kickstarter.com and it took off like a rocket, meeting its financial goal of $39,000 in less than 10 days. There's still three weeks before the project closes on Thursday April 26, 2012.
I want to get some people from Switzerland involved in building a prototype of the Air Quality Egg as a DIY project for the IoT Zurich meetup community, but, unfortunately, I and another enthusiast, JP de Vooght, lack all the necessary skills.
- Are you interested in leading an AQE workshop or getting involved?
- Do you have a venue where about 10 people can meet for a half day (with benches where use of sodering tools is convenient)? What else is needed? a 3D printer?
Join the Air Quality Egg Project and contact JP before April 25! We can promote the activity on the IoT-Zurich meetup list and page.